☝️ Artemis is off to the moon.
Continue to watch this NASA feed for live mission coverage. This YouTube channel will continue live 7/24 for the next 10 days throughout the mission.
A great account/thread to follow for more detailed information on Artemis is here from @AkaSci
Whew. That was crazy.
For about 10 minutes they lost comms with the spacecraft.
They rebooted the ground communications system, and are now talking with the spacecraft again.
Apparently the astronauts could hear mission control, but mission control could not hear the astronauts. Some bidirectional data comms were never lost.
Continues to be fascinating...
Right now, the start up of the toilet has hit a snag (amber light). They are trouble shooting the system.
Everything else seems 'nominal', meaning OK.
Press conference on right now.
Super interesting and informative.
Just want to comment on how refreshing it is to watch dry uncensored straightforward public agency reporting versus the type of PR and boosterism coverage we get from private space corporations who carefully restrict information and even cut off if things don't go well.
Kudos to NASA!
Now they are performing some maneuvers to pilot the spacecraft as would be required in docking maneuvers.
They are going to undock from the ICPS (the first stage) and then approach the ICPS as if it were something they were actually docking with, coming close (15m) from the ICPS.
Edit: Incredible!!!
Edit2: What a great spacecraft! He is reporting how responsive, precise and smooth the maneuvers are.
They have now backed away from the ICPS and are going to turn the ICPS and perform some docking maneuvers with the side of the ICPS...
Everything seems to continue to go well. The astronauts are stowing gear and getting ready to sleep for four hours. They will then wake up and perform a burn to adjust their orbit. Then they will sleep again for five hours. After this sleep period they will begin preparing for the burn maneuver that will take them to the moon.
Pleasant dreams and good luck to our brave explorers.
[This YouTube channel provides 7/24 live coverage of the mission: https://www.youtube.com/live/m3kR2KK8TEs]
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